


SNAFU

by thelightninginme



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Complicated Relationships, Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst, M/M, just good old fashioned h/c, recovery is the slowest burn of all
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-24
Updated: 2019-02-24
Packaged: 2019-11-05 01:15:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17909234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thelightninginme/pseuds/thelightninginme
Summary: From Wikipedia: SNAFU is widely used to stand for the sarcastic expression Situation Normal: All Fucked Up, as a well-known example of military acronym slang. It means that the situation is bad, but that this is a normal state of affairs. It is typically used in a joking manner to describe something that is working as intended. The acronym is believed to have originated in the United States Marine Corps during World War II.OR: it takes Steve practically crash-landing in Wakanda, bruised and bleeding, for Bucky to realize that for every one thing that has changed, there are two more things that have stayed exactly the same.





	SNAFU

The problem with hypervigilance is…a lot of things, but for one, it makes it hard to sleep, especially when sharing space with goats. 

Well, there are a lot of reasons Bucky does not sleep much, but it is easy to blame the nocturnal activities of the goats. 

So he reads a lot at night. This is the first time in his life since he was a child that he has had time to read for pleasure, he thinks with grim amusement, and yet he reaches for textbooks and technical manuals and history more often than not. But it helps quiet his mind enough to get some sleep, helps the noise of goats and birds and villagers and the water fade into a background soundtrack rather than transforming it into alarm bells that send him tumbling out of bed. 

So one night, Bucky wakes, and quickly realizes it is not sound that has jerked him out of sleep, but rather the complete and total absence of it. He sits up in bed, silent, listening, debating whether or not he needs to retrieve his left arm from the case under his bed. Honestly, he could probably kill any intruder one-armed and in the dark. 

Footsteps. Coming towards his hut. If it was Hydra or CIA or whoever coming to bring him in, they would be more stealthy about it. He doesn’t relax, though, because then that raises the question of who is coming to see him in the middle of the night. Silently he climbs out of bed and stands there, waiting. 

“Bucky?” 

He exhales slowly. “‘M awake,” he calls. 

Steve’s hulking form, silhouetted by moonlight, appears in the doorway a moment later. He is already apologizing. “I’m sorry about this, I wasn’t sure where else to go - ”

“Where’re the others?” 

“Fine. We got separated, is all.” 

Bucky turns and switches on the lamp by his bed. A very efficient solar-powered generator supplies electricity to the whole village; he has no idea how something that small can provide so much power and he would tinker with it if Shuri wouldn’t murder him for messing with one of her designs. 

When he turns back to Steve, his breath catches in his throat. Steve’s covered in blood. 

It takes Steve a moment to realize why Bucky is staring at him like that. “It’s not mine,” he says quickly.

But the sight still sends Bucky’s mind tumbling elsewhere, a place populated with fuzzy images and dark sensations, somewhere he is sure he does not want to go, so he turns and busies himself digging through the chest at the foot of his bed for a change of clothes. 

Perhaps picking up on his discomfort, Steve apologizes again. “I just need a few hours - ”

“No, I know. Stay as long as you want.” He retrieves a pair of linen sleep pants and a t-shirt. Robes are one thing during the day, but trying to sleep in them is another, as he learned on his second night in the village. He woke with the fabric all bunched up around his legs, and he had already punched a hole in the wall before he realized he wasn’t in restraints. 

“Here,” he says, waving the clothing at Steve, without turning. “Just - put ‘em on.” 

Steve gets the hint, and Bucky hears the soft click of a buckle unlatching as he goes to remove his bloody uniform. Bucky thinks he shouldn’t be so awkward about Steve undressing; it’s not like it’s anything he hasn’t seen before, and that’s true even in a platonic sense. They were soldiers together, and they lived together in a one-bedroom apartment before that. Hell, Bucky is fairly certain that his mother had an ancient photograph of them in the bathtub together. Maybe it’s just the blood. Maybe it’s not just the blood. 

But then Steve inhales sharply, and when Bucky turns he has stripped down to his black undershirt, and even in the dim lamplight Bucky can see where it’s torn and where Steve’s hand comes away from his side, bloody. 

“I thought you said it wasn’t yours,” Bucky says flatly. 

“Most of it’s not mine,” Steve amends. 

“‘S there a kit in the jet?” 

“Yeah. But I can - ”

Bucky doesn’t linger to listen to Steve’s insistence that he’s fine; he turns and hurries from the hut, his sharp eyes picking out the sleek lines of the quinjet parked nearby. He swings inside and retrieves the medical kit from its place near the pilot’s seat just as quickly. When he returns to the hut it’s to Steve hunched over, attempting to tug off his boots, face pinched with pain. 

“What’re you - sit down,” Bucky orders, pointing at the bed. Steve straightens and opens his mouth as if to protest, but all he does is sway on his feet for half a moment and then shuffle over to the bed, sitting down on the edge of it gingerly. 

“Don’t want to bleed all over your stuff,” Steve mutters. 

“Little late for that,” Bucky says. He dumps the medical kit on the floor and kneels in front of Steve. “Want me to cut it off?” he asks, nodding towards Steve’s shirt. 

“Nah, it’s not that bad.” He wriggles out of it, slowly, as Bucky retrieves an antiseptic pad from the kit and tears it open with his teeth. Shuri would be disappointed to know how little he uses the left arm. It’s a beautiful design, functional and miles more comfortable than the old one, but still, he likes having the choice to go without it. 

It’s a gunshot wound in Steve’s side. A graze, thankfully; no bullet to worry about it. “It’s not that bad,” Steve repeats. “I don’t think it even needs stitches.” He makes a half-hearted reach for the pad in Bucky’s hand, but Bucky jerks it away. 

“You got shot?” he says, somewhere between a question and a statement. He was probably the last one to shoot Steve, he thinks, as he begins cleaning the wound. 

Steve exhales loudly. “You could be a little gentler.”

“You could be more careful.” 

“Yeah, well, better me than her.”

“Who, Natasha?” 

“No, Wanda.” 

Steve falls silent for a moment. “Did I tell you she had a brother? A twin?”

“What happened to him?” Bucky asks, as he applies a thick bandage to Steve’s side.

“We did.”

Steve moves slowly, like the centenarian he actually is, and bends over to pull off his boots with another hiss of pain. 

“Stop it,” Bucky mumbles, swatting his hand away, and yanks off Steve’s boots one after the other. Steve wriggles his toes a little, and when Bucky looks up at him Steve is staring at him, slightly open mouthed, like Bucky just kissed him. 

It’s not as though they haven’t touched since Bucky remembered. For one thing, neither of them could hardly stand up after Siberia. And Steve hugged him a good long time after he came out of cryo. But all that feels somehow miles less intimate than taking off Steve’s smelly combat boots. 

They took Bucky’s notebooks and locked them up in an anonymous evidence locker. Fair enough, considering he stole the first one out of a kid’s open backpack. Maybe they found the page where he wrote “I LOVE YOU I LOVE YOU I LOVE YOU I LOVE YOU” over and over in black lettering, so thick in places you can’t see the white paper beneath. Even now it still seems like something that people only say in movies. Not a thing he has ever said, or has ever been said to him. But he did, and it was. He said it on the coldest nights when they had to find other ways to keep warm besides huddling up together. Steve said it from a new body still too big for him, with just a hint of question behind it - do you still love me? He said it when he thought Steve was probably too feverish to hear him. And he thinks he heard it before the darkness of cryo closed in on him for the last time. 

He likes to think that he’ll be able to say it again, someday. And it doesn’t even have to be to Steve. He just wants to be able to say it again to someone, anyone, and mean it. And it’s not as though he made it through the last seventy years just to stop caring about Steve, but what he feels now is so much messier than what he knows he felt back then. It wouldn’t be right, or fair, to say it now, or to even hear it now, when he isn’t even sure how capable he is of loving, of being loved, of being vulnerable. 

“I’m gonna wash up,” Steve mumbles, pushing himself up off the bed and shuffling into the small bathroom without waiting for Bucky’s acknowledgment. Bucky stands mechanically and begins grabbing extra pillows and blankets out of the chest by his bed to set up camp on the floor. His mind is far away, trying to make his grayscale memories into something they aren’t. 

All of his pre-Hydra memories play out in his head like the silent movies of his childhood. He confessed this once over Skype to Steve, who chuckled awkwardly and said, “Yeah, Buck, that’s how memories work.” Bucky let it drop, but it’s different than the memories he has from after leaving Hydra. Those have weight. Those feel like something he could get his arms around. 

The first time they kissed was a night sort of like this one. They were seventeen and sixteen, at another kid’s house on a Saturday night, Bucky doesn’t remember the name. Something ending in -y or -ie. Charlie or Teddy or Eddie. They were drinking y-or-ie’s dad’s cheap gin, and one thing led to another like it always did until Steve was taking more punches than he was throwing. So Bucky took him home to patch him up (where was Sarah? working the night shift? was she already getting sick by then?) and all at once Steve had leaned in to kiss Bucky. Leave it to Steve to act without thinking, to put both of their tender teenage hearts at risk like that. 

“Buck?” Steve is standing in the doorway, a hand towel draped over his shoulder. 

Bucky realizes he’s been standing there staring at nothing in particular, fingertips resting on his mouth. “Sorry. Just remembering something.”

“Good or bad?” 

“Good.” 

Steve doesn’t push the way he did when they were kids. Bucky sometimes wonders if he should. Steve just lets it drop. 

“You should sleep,” Bucky says. “Seriously?” he adds, once Steve makes a move for the nest of blankets. “You’re hurt. Take the damn bed.” 

The fact that Steve is apparently too tired to argue is a sign he feels worse than he’s letting on. Steve remains silent until they have settled into their respective beds, and then he croaks, “Just like a sleepover when we were kids.” 

Bucky stares up at the ceiling of the hut. “Yep.” But childhood sleepovers is not where his mind went. He used to lay like this and listen to Steve’s rattling breaths, holding his own when they got too quiet. Bucky closes his eyes and chases down that memory, but it slips out of his grasp just as he gets close to it. 

He drifts in and out of sleep, but it’s that old instinct to listen for Steve’s breathing that brings him abruptly out of it. It’s not the shallow wheezing of fragile lungs, but rather the erratic gasps of someone clasped tight in a nightmare. 

“Steve,” Bucky says softly, but no response. He sits up and leans over, putting his hand on Steve’s arm and giving it a little shake. “Wake up.” Still nothing. He hauls himself up to rest on the edge of the bed. Steve finally stirs at the movement. He opens his eyes, blinks a few times, and then his eyes land on Bucky in the blue-toned darkness of the early morning hour. He mouths his name and then squeezes his eyes shut, rubbing the space between them with his thumb and forefinger. “I think you were having a nightmare,” Bucky offers. 

“Yep,” Steve croaks. “Sorry - sorry if I woke you.” 

Bucky is at a complete loss as to what to do next. The thing that makes it worse is that the real Bucky would know what to do. 

His therapist has told him he is not to refer to his past self in that way. “Call him past-Bucky, if you must,” she said, “but don’t do yourself the disservice of making him out to be more real than you are.” 

This only came up after Steve’s last visit, his first visit since Bucky left the palace complex and settled in the village. It was Steve’s fault, but also not really, because all he did was look around with a bemused expression on his face and say, “Never would’ve imagined you settling down somewhere like this.”

Bucky just wanted it to be about the future, not about what he might have done in the past, since for the first time that he could really remember he actually had a future to consider. Even before the war, life was more about just getting through the end of the day with all of them still whole and intact. The truth was, this little spit of land was the biggest thing he had ever called his own, and then Steve had gone and made it about who Bucky used to be - about a man he would never be again. The fact of the matter remained that he wasn’t the man, the lover, that Steve remembered, or deserved. 

But can’t you be  _something_? asks a little voice in the back of his mind, and so Bucky says something that surprises them both. 

“Do you want to talk about it?”

When Steve asks that question the answer is almost always no, and on the few occasions when the answer is yes Bucky only shares in a generalized way, as if speaking of the ghosts rattling around in his brain makes them more real and therefore more powerful. Somehow he had never considered that if he asked the question of Steve, the answer would be yes.

“It was bad intel. What happened today. It was supposed to be an abandoned base. That’s why Wanda came along on this one - she wants to get back in to it, you know, but she says she’s not ready to get back to the high stakes stuff. Anyway, it wasn’t abandoned, not by a long shot. They were dug in. They must’ve realized us or - or somebody would show up for them sooner or later. It wasn’t a lot of them, six or seven, and most were science guys, just a couple of heavies, but they had the jump on us. Once it was over Wanda and I swept the place. We came across a - lab, I guess - I don’t know what they were doing, maybe once Nat decrypts what we got out of the place, but - it was on other people. And we were too late to do anything for them.” 

Bucky must flinch or make some other physical sign of distress because Steve’s gaze slides from some distant spot on the wall back to Bucky. His glassy eyes go clear again. “God, Bucky - I’m - I’ll stop.” 

And Bucky doesn’t want to hear any more about these other anonymous victims of Hydra, people who did not even have the luxury he did of forgetting that they were even once human. But Steve opened his mouth and the words just came pouring out of him. Maybe, Bucky realizes, Steve needs to talk about it more than Bucky doesn’t want to hear about it. 

“You don’t have to,” Bucky says quietly. “Not if you don’t want to.”  

“There’s not really much else to say. There was one last scientist hiding out in there. He had a gun, he turned it on Wanda first. She froze up, so.” Steve gestures at his bandaged wound. “Then there was a struggle while I tried to get the gun away from him. And then Wanda kind of…snapped her fingers and…” He gestures at his bloody clothes heaped on the floor. 

“Jesus.” 

“She was just standing there, and I thought - I was waiting for her to scream or cry or something, but she didn’t. She just marched out of there like a soldier.” Once again his gaze slides away to rest on some distant spot over Bucky’s shoulder. “One of them hit the panic button without us realizing. Tons of reinforcements. All we could do was get out of there, and even then we had to separate. All that for nothing. We didn’t even…” 

So Bucky reaches across and takes Steve’s cold hand in his own, gently brushing his thumb over the unblemished knuckles. “Wasn’t your fault,” he says automatically. 

“Yeah,” Steve answers, packing one hundred years into that one syllable. 

Bucky looks down at Steve’s hand in his own. It used to be so much smaller. The knuckles used to be bandaged or bloody or both. There used to be so many nights like this one. And it kind of hits him all at once why the sight of Steve in bloody clothing hurled him so far off balance - because he’s seen it a thousand times before, but not in what feels like a thousand years. 

That kiss, Bucky remembers, came when he was halfway through scolding Steve for dragging them into another fight. He remembers that Steve dropped the ice pack he was holding to his brewing shiner and leaned in to cup Bucky’s cheek. He remembers how cold Steve’s thin fingers were. There were was about half a beat where Bucky didn’t know what the answer was then, either, and then it came to him that there was really only one answer and he’d known it all along - kiss him back.n

It doesn’t quite feel like a real memory, still. But at least now it’s maybe sepia-toned instead of grayscale. 

“You could just…stop. Retire,” Bucky says.

“Yeah? And go where? Do what?” Steve doesn’t actually say ‘herd goats?’ but Bucky hears it all the same, and he slowly draws his hand back. 

Steve withdraws his newly free hand and scrubs it over his face, the makings of the beard that Bucky secretly thinks looks kind of ridiculous. “I’m sorry, Buck, I just - ”

“You could stay here,” he says quietly. It comes out like a question. This is technically the village’s invitation to extend, but ‘here’ feels like something more intangible than their current physical location. “It’s - I know it’s not - even though I can’t - ” He huffs in annoyance at the words chasing themselves around in his brain. That’s the problem with never speaking unless spoken to for seventy years. “I’m not what I was, but you still - you have a place here. You know that, right? You have a place here.” He knows his voice is taking on a note of desperation but he doesn’t know how to stop it, because Steve has to know, has to understand, that  _God_ , after everything, at least Bucky can offer him this much. 

Steve nods slowly and his expression smooths out, as if it was a conclusion he came to himself without Bucky’s declaration. “I do know that,” he says, and he sounds almost surprised that he does. “But it’s still nice to hear you say it.” This time it’s Steve who reaches out and encloses his hand around Bucky’s. They sit in silence for a while as light begins to leak through the colorful fabric Bucky has commissioned as curtains. The room is bathed in a warm orange glow. 

“I remember…us,” Bucky says quietly. 

“Yeah,” Steve answers. Bucky was not expecting this to be big news. They’re currently holding hands, for one thing. 

“Do you still…” Bucky shrugs helplessly. 

“Yeah.”

“I can’t now, but I - I don’t know - I’m sorry - ”

“Hey.  _Hey_.” Steve squeezes his hand. “Bucky, look at me. It’s okay. You’re enough just exactly as you are.”

“But - ”

“No, let me finish. I don’t expect anything from you. I don’t.” Something shifts in Steve’s expression; something clicks into place. “And if I’ve  _ever_  said or did anything that made you feel the opposite, I’m sorry.” 

Maybe it doesn’t matter, how faded and threadbare Bucky’s memories are; not when Steve manages to just know these unspoken things. Maybe even after all this time, after everything he’s ruined, maybe there is still some core part of him - his soul? - that is still the same as it was when they loved each other all those years ago. 

“Did I? Say something?” Steve asks, and Bucky nods once. “I’m sorry,” Steve says again. “I’m sorry about tonight, God, I’m sorry about all of it - ” His voice goes strangled and so once again Bucky disentangles their hands but this time it’s to pull Steve against him. Steve just sighs and drops his head to let his forehead rest on Bucky’s shoulder. He’s so warm, hot skin burning straight through Bucky’s thin t-shirt. Steve hooks an arm around Bucky’s waist, pulling himself a little tighter. Before he can talk himself out of it Bucky presses a kiss to the crown of Steve’s head. His heart races for a moment, and Steve sighs against his neck, but that’s it. The sky doesn’t fall. They’re okay. Bucky just feels…warm, in a way that has nothing to do with the human furnace currently wrapped in his embrace. 

Wakanda is the first time Bucky can remember where he is really considering the future. The only thing he knows for certain it that Steve is a part of that future. In exactly what capacity, as a friend or something more, he’s not sure yet, but maybe he doesn’t need to know just yet. Maybe what he can do now will be enough for the both of them. 


End file.
